Putting Sly To Shame Schwarzenegger Out-rambos Stallone

October 27, 1985|By Joe Bob Briggs

I knew Arnold had it in him. I knew, after he made Terminator, it was only a matter of time 'til he did the ultimate Rambo ripoff. Arnold the Barbarian has the kind of deltoids Sly Stallone can only drool over and then say, ''Oh, sorry, would you like me to wipe that wad of spit off your extremely muscular self, your Sirship?'' We're talkin' Commando, where Arnold gets a burr haircut, rubs some dirt on his face, steals a shoulder-mount rocket-launcher, 18 machine guns and 34,000 rounds of ammo, and kills a Meskin army.

First we have a bunch of plot about how Arnold used to be a commando spy, only now the evil President Poncho's men are killing all Arnold's men by posing as garbagemen and then waitin' for 'em to haul their Hefty Bags out to the street, or by running 'em down with Cadillacs on the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Arnold is just minding his own binness, living out in the woods, chopping down sequoias with a Black-and-Decker and carrying the trees on his shoulder back to the house, so his 11-year-old simp daughter can play horsey with him.

Pretty soon, though, President Poncho grabs the daughter, machine-guns a few Marines, and tells Arnold if he don't go down to Guateragua and kill President Jose for him, then ''I will mail your daughter to you in pieces.'' Arnold tells him this is a violation of U.S. postal laws, jumps off the plane that's flying him to Nicamala, and figures he's got 11 hours before they find out and turn his daughter into ballerina salad.

So what does Arnold do? He picks up a stewardess and steals her Porsche and tells her she has to help him. Pretty soon they're zipping into the Galleria, where Arnold kung-fus 37 security guards, and then they go to a motel and ram a coffee-table leg through a Green Beret, and then Arnold gets bored and so they have to go down to the army-surplus store and ram a bulldozer through the front of it and steal some assault rifles and foot flippers. Finally, they jump in a seaplane to fly out to a secret island and kill 600 or 700 people so Arnold can settle his differences in a civilized manner with a gay heavy-metal soldier of fortune that likes to wear bracelets and say things like, ''I will just love to kill you.''